Monthly Archives: July 2014

Looking for a mid-range phone on Verizon? Then you’ve got two more choices starting today. The LG G Vista, an enormous “phablet” device, and the Kyocera Brigadier, the latest in the company’s line of “tough” phones, are both on sale now at Verizon’s website. They should be in at least some company-owned retailer stores starting Thursday, July 31st. Both phones are being sold for $ 99.99 on-contract, and both are $ 400 without a commitment.

Okay, we had an app sales post earlier today, but something just popped up that we felt was worthy of its own emergency sales post in case we don’t get another full sales roundup ready before it’s gone. Monument Valley, easily one of the coolest games to grace Android in… well, ever… is on sale for $ 2.49.

This game is usually $ 3.99, so it’s not like you’re going to save a boatload of cash, but this is one of those rare games that feels seriously underpriced.

The Google Play Developer Console has undergone some pretty major changes over the years, including a complete overhaul 2 years ago. While the improvements continue to make for a more powerful and usable tool, some developers still find areas where it could be better. Google’s engineers don’t have time to build everything for everybody, but a new version of the Google Play Developer API makes it possible to build quite a few things for yourself.

We’ve come to have reason to believe that Motorola and possibly Google are working on a 5.9″ phone codenamed Shamu. That’s about all we know. We know it showed up in Google’s issue tracker, and that the issue was created by a known testing company who check prerelease hardware for just this sort of thing. We know the device is running a Google-built kernel and that this points to a Nexus or, at least, something Nexus-like.

There’s been a lot of confusion lately over the fate of Google’s Nexus program. Rumors swirled, after LG’s planned Nexus was canceled (and later denied entirely), that the program was dead in favor of an upcoming Android Silver initiative. With the revelation that HTC is working on a 9″ tablet device (code named Volantis), it seemed the Nexus program had at least one more device in store – expected to launch with Android’s L release this fall.

Just like any open marketplace, there’s a lot of crap in the Play Store. In a strange and roundabout way, I’m actually OK with that – separating the silver from the dross of Android apps is one of our core functions at Android Police. But a recent promotion from antivirus vendor Trend Micro painted an extremely dim picture of the Play Store. The company claimed, among other things, that the Play Store was full of “potentially evil doppelgangers…

It’s impossible for new customers to buy unlimited mobile data from Verizon. But this wasn’t always the case: back in the glory days of, uh, 2010 and earlier, Verizon Wireless was still offering true unlimited data for as little as $ 30 a month. It’s been increasingly hard for users who want to keep their unlimited data to do so: since late 2012, they haven’t been able to buy a new subsidized phone without switching over to a plan with a data cap, and the “grandfathered” unlimited data customers who download the most are already subject to “network optimization” when using Verizon’s 3G network.

Some discoveries are exciting enough to reach out to every Android Police reader all over the globe and bring them into our comments section to summon their best GIFs and memes. Other discoveries are simply amusing. Consider this one the latter. As it turns out, Play Store changelogs are capable of displaying emoji.

You can see this for yourself by looking at the changelog on the Music Boss for Wear Google Play page, assuming you’ve joined the beta group beforehand.

Hold on to your butts, everyone. I’m about to drop some news that will blow your minds. Samsung has a new phone in the works, and there’s one thing that will supposedly make this thing different from all of the others. SamMobile has leaked images of the upcoming Galaxy Alpha, a Galaxy S5 variant that will apparently be constructed at least in part out of aluminum.

As you can see in these screens, the phone won’t look strikingly different regardless of what it’s made of.

Google teased an upcoming release of the Play Store with Material Design element at I/O last month, and we actually got a pretty good look at the new version ourselves last week. Starting today, that new version, 4.9.13, is rolling out, and we’ve got the APK for you, as always. Take a look at this quick visual overview of the changes (we’ve got more images down below as well), and be sure to read Liam’s post on the update for all the details.